PocketBible for Windows Now Available

I’m happy to announce that PocketBible for Windows is now available at our Web site.

We’ll be sending emails to existing customers over the next 2-3 days with a discounted price of $19.99. Regular retail price is $29.99. If you can’t wait we’d be happy to accept the extra $10.

Any books you’ve already purchased for MyBible or PocketBible will entitle you to download the same books for your Windows PC. The only exception is the Ancient Christian Commentary Series, which we’re prohibited from distributing on the desktop until some date in the future. We’re trying to remedy that because it’s a great commentary series and we’d like to see more people using it.

We’ve mentioned it before but one of the cool options you have for another $19.99 is receiving your entire PocketBible for Windows library on a USB flash memory drive. You can still download now for immediate satisfaction, but then we’ll send you everything in your download account (including existing purchases plus anything you purchase at the time you place your USB flash drive order) that is compatible with PocketBible for Windows on one USB drive, complete with custom Laridian lanyard.

Just a reminder: If you have technical questions, send them to Tech Support through the Help Desk at our Web site. Don’t post them here. There are several reasons: First, by going through the Help Desk you may find that your question is already answered. Second, your question will get directly to our tech support department without depending on one of them to wander in and read the blog comments. Finally, there are people who subscribe to these blog comments and you’re just clogging up the comments with issues that only pertain to you. Just so you know, even though all comments to this blog are moderated, we always approve the tech support questions that get posted here just so people can laugh at you behind your back.

That was quick. Already purchased and downloaded all my material to a USB drive. Did my remaining Bible reading on my Mac Book Pro (through VMWare Fusion) then plugged the USB drive into another machine and pulled up my Bibles to browse through. Very nice to pop that USB drive in my pocket and have it everywhere. I will spend a good deal of time with it tonight and tomorrow figuring all the particulars out.

Kudos on a job very well done. Anything that puts the word of God more easily at our fingertips is a tremendous blessing and furthers His work.

Kevin: The USB drives will be as big as they need to be. The current batch are 256MB. It’s surprisingly difficult to purchase large quantities of USB flash drives at anything less than the price you’d find at BestBuy. So we’ve been vague about the size in order to have some flexibility to get whatever we need when we need it.

With the exception of about three people (we know who you are!) everyone’s library should fit on 256MB.

Craig, congrats to you and the team at Laridian – Pocket Bible for Windows is excellent (thanks for the discount, btw!). It is simple and pleasing to use; other programs offer more in terms of language studies etc but I love now having the opportunity to sync notes between the desktop and mobile versions (well, when the pB update is released…:)

Can I encourage you to continue adding other resources to those already available – if you were to make Greek and Hebrew texts available that would be most welcome. I’m sure your commitment to your customers will continue to reap results, both for the company and in the lives of those who use the product.

Baggas: There’s always a chance; I don’t want to rule that out. However it’s not something we’re actively working on. I’ve been telling people that our iPocketBible for iPhone may end up being the path to Laridian Bible software on your Mac. The iPhone runs a version of the Safari browser, and we use Safari on a PC to test it. It also looks good on a Mac. Since the iPocketBible program is really just a Web site, there’s no reason Mac users couldn’t make use of it, too.

That was quick. Already purchased and downloaded all my material to a USB drive. Did my remaining Bible reading on my Mac Book Pro (through VMWare Fusion) then plugged the USB drive into another machine and pulled up my Bibles to browse through. Very nice to pop that USB drive in my pocket and have it everywhere. I will spend a good deal of time with it tonight and tomorrow figuring all the particulars out.

Kudos on a job very well done. Anything that puts the word of God more easily at our fingertips is a tremendous blessing and furthers His work.

Blessings on your ministry.

Mary, again…as a regular user of Pocket Bible, by means of my Axim X30/Windows Mobile 2003SE…and an owner of both a G4 laptop and a MacBook, I, too, would love to make use of your software through both means. I am unfamiliar with VMWare Fusion that the gentleman references, in his comments; but wonder where you would direct me for guidance in making full use of your great software, and the Pocket Bible software I have already purchased from y’all?

(I hope this is an acceptable question to ask, in this forum, as this is where I found his comments.)

As you might suspect, we are not Mac experts here. We own a few Macs but we use them as God intended and not for product development.

So… I Googled VMWare and found this site: http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/. Looks like an interesting program. It looks like you spend about $60 for Fusion then you buy a copy of Windows and install it on your Mac.

We don’t necessarily recommend or support programs like this, but we don’t mind people using it if it works.

Thank you so much for providing such an incredible follow up to the PDA/Smartphone software I have counted on so many times in my full time staff position at my church. I ordered the USB Flash Drive this morning (8/22) and was wondering if you could let us know the approximate turn around time for it shipping. Will we receive a separate email with a tracking number and shipping information once it has been shipped like I do for other products I order on the internet? I wonder if I happen to be one of the 3 mentioned above that may need a larger USB Flash Drive than the standard one? You guys are an incredible blessing to so many people for all the hard work you do for His Glory. You are very much appreciated. God bless, Andy

What a great program! I have been wanting the ability to use the Bibles and books on my PDA on my PC for a long time. The portability on a USB drive is a big plus. Thanks for you efforts! I have only had a little time to use PocketBible for Windows since I bought and downloaded it this morning, but it is very easy to install and use. thanks for your efforts! David

I notice that nearly ALL the LBK files are byte by byte identical to the LBK files in my PocketPC PocketBible. With four exceptions: NLTse, BKC, and both the CWSD_OT and CWS_NT. Are these updates to these books that I could copy to my PocketPC? Or are they specialized Windows PC only files?

Jonathan that really sounds like a tech support question but since it raises a general point I’m going to answer it here.

The LBK format is common to both the Windows and Pocket PC platforms. In fact they run exactly the same code which saves us a little time and effort. If there is a difference it is probably because we’ve fixed some small typo or something between the time we last updated the Pocket PC version and the release of the Windows version.

If you’re clever enough to figure it out (it isn’t hard) you can manually copy the LBK files from your PC to your Pocket PC. In fact, you can copy them the other direction if you happen to own a book for the Pocket PC that we are not allowed to distribute for the desktop.

Hi Craig,
I had asked in an earlier post if you could let us know if we will receive some type of notification about when the USB Flash Drives we ordered are being sent, and still did not receive a reply about that. Would it be possible for you to indicate if we will receive a confirmation # and/or shipping info on them? Also, if you are able to give us a rough estimate when they will start shipping? Thanks, Andy

I remember replying to your post but it either got lost in the ether or I posted it to the wrong article.

The USB drives are being shipped via us mail so there is no tracking available. We had a slight delay as we dealt with some installation issues under Vista. I signed off on the installer on Friday afternoon and I believe we started building devices over the weekend. I anticipate the bulk of the outstanding orders will ship on Monday.

Hi Craig & Laridian Team…so far so good with the Windows version, though I must tell you my wife is not too happy with you folks. She calls my Axim X51v my 2nd wife, she never complained in the old days when I sat in my easy chair with a bible and a few reference books at night, but for the last 8 years since I’ve been using PocketBible, I sit in the chair with my Dell (she must think I’m playing solitaire or something!)

Anyway….I know you guys are slammed with the new rollouts and little bug fixes, but where do you want suggestions/enhancement requests posted? I’m assuming this blog. I’d say I use PocketBible on my Dell about 70% of the time, Logos Scholars Gold Library on my laptop about 30% of the time. I’m not the biggest fan of Logos, but their interlinear bibles are the best I’ve seen.

I don’t want to sound unappreciative, so whenever you’re ready for enhancement requests, I propose a dedicated thread on this blog.

As the owner of over 20 of your titles currently running on an old Jornada PocketPC (now used for nothing but PocketBible since the BlackBerry came along) I will be buying the new Windows version from your email offer. Many thanks for the “early adopter” discount. Your work has helped me prepare to teach Sunday School class for many years now and likely for years to come. The kids are very impressed at seeing the bibles and so many reference works on a PDA.

I actually moved off Windows onto Apple OS X just over a year ago after about 25 years as a Windows user (faster OS, no viruses, better hardware). The new Intel-based Macs will run Windows within virtual machine software (either Parallels or VMWare) just as if it were running on a native Windows machine: full speed, full featured. Given that my 17″ MacBook Pro is the best portable computer I have ever owned from a hardware perspective, the ability to run any Windows program inside a window on the Mac desktop is the icing on the cake. I will let you know if I have any problem with PocketBible for Windows, although I don’t anticipate any. In the meantime, I would echo the earlier requests for a native Mac version of PocketBible as well, if at all possible.

Joel: You can submit feature requests through tech support. Those go into a database for review when we’re contemplating new features. And you can always send an email to me personally.

George: I’m glad to hear you’ve been enjoying PocketBible for so long on your Jornada. I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but you just listed one of the big reasons why it’s unlikely we’ll do a native Mac version: It’s so easy to run Windows on a Mac that there’s little motivation to do a native Mac version. The incremental sales increase wouldn’t cover development.

Consider that the Mac market is a fraction of the size of the Windows market, so you’re already talking about less sales and therefore less revenue to support development. Then consider that a large percentage of Mac users will already be able to run PocketBible for Windows. That means that if we do a native Mac version the difference in revenue would be even smaller than if you couldn’t run Windows apps on a Mac.

On the other hand we’re a mobile software company that just came out with desktop software. So nothing here is set in stone.

Rich, those all went out last week so yours is either stuck in your spam filter or we have a different address for you in our database than the one you’re using. For others in the same situation, write to support@laridian.com and we’ll get you taken care of. Rich, I’ll email you some info.

Andrew, we haven’t announced a date yet for any of the upcoming products. One of the reasons we don’t normally talk about what we’re working on is because we get swamped with emails like this when people know what’s next. We’ve loosened up a bit this summer to see how it goes. So far everyone’s been pretty good about just letting us get the work done.

Here’s what we’ve said: The order of the next few releases will be:

iPocketBible for iPhone

PocketBible for Pocket PC/Smartphone sync provider

iPocketBible sync provider

MyBible for Palm OS sync provider

Nobody has asked but it’s unlikely that there will be a sync provider for the Noah program for BlackBerry. The fact that nobody has asked might be a clue as to why. Actually we’re not opposed to it but it would require the efforts of the outside development company who created that program.

I was so pleased to hear in a recent email that you were producing
a Windows version. I was ‘over the moon’ to get your email last week
saying it was available! I just had to express my appreciation here.
Having the ability to access my Bibles, Commentaries and Dictionaries
on my PC as well as my Palm is just FANTASTIC.

Also, not only is the price brilliant but the design approach you’ve
chosen for installing and running the software is excellent. I am
truly impressed with your software design and implementation and your
non rip-off – we aim to provide a superb service for the customer approach!

As a lecturer who teaches software engineering and so is a bit of a ‘cynic’
about commercial software, I should say that this is the first time I’ve
ever written to applaud a company on their strategy and products!

I’ve been using PB for Windows for almost a week now, and I think it’s great. You have done a much better job moving to the PC than other Bible software companies have done trying to move to PDAs. Your windows/panes configuration tool is very innovative. The way your Find lists change based on the active book is neat as well. My personal books I’ve tried so far work well, including with the Find feature.

The way you toggle between panes and full screen and between tabbed and parallel views makes it easy to work with the books. The Bible synchronization in parallel view works well.

My only “complaint” so far is on syncing of dictionaries when using the Go To button and the fact that some dictionaries are indexed differently, but that’s not a program issue.

Like others, I want to get my highlights and bookmarks from my PDA on to the PC.

I had to use the help only once, when moving the program and books to my portable hard drive. I changed the books folder location based on the help guidelines and they were found.

I’m not sure what your market objectives are, but this program would be good for someone who wanted just a Windows-based Bible study program even if they don’t have a PDA. Of course, now we can have the best of both worlds in one package.

Just expand your library as you have time. I know you have plenty of suggestions.

Well…I’ve been using PB for Windows for about a week now and I really like it. As a person that’s used just about all Windows based bible applications, Laridian for PPC has always been my primary app, but I’ve used my laptop to prepare for my classes, write my agendas and develop my study outlines. (how bout a built in text editor or at least some MS Word macros to automatically add in verses, definition or commentary notes????).

Anyway…if you’re familiar with PB for the Handheld PC, it’s very similar but with lots of upgrades. I still ocasionally open up my HP Jornada 728 if I’m on a plane and the tray in front of me is too small to open my laptop.

I’ve got lots of suggestions/enhancement improvements that I’ve been sending to support, but I have to say, I really like it.

OK, before I get too crazy, I have to calm down. I’ve seen a lot of software. I used to be a software marketing manager at IBM and run a $ million multimedia studio. I’ve been involved in publishing as a writer and editor for years (and I’m a book collector). It takes a lot – something AMAZINGLY COOL, to get me this pumped!

Greetings in the precious name of our Lord and Savior Jesus. Thank you for the work that you all are doing in making Bible study so easy and enjoyable. I have been using PocketBible on my handheld for about three and a half years now and have really loved it for its portability and power. However, my enjoyment for Bible study has increased manifold with the Pocket Bible for Windows (PBW) program mainly because it allows so much more on the screen at one time and allows me to flow in my studies much better. I find that I can accomplish so much more in less time. I have had several Bible study programs over the years, including PC Study Bible 5 Advanced Reference Library – which costs a lot more than PBW. Over the past few weeks I have had a few of questions and issues as I have been using the product more and more and Patty has been very patient and responsive.

I was wondering if prepared Bible studies are available or if Laridian or Pocket Bible has a support group or user group that may make such available to each other? I am asking because I just created a couple of studies that may be useful for others, and I wondered about what other people are doing and how we can get together to share information about how we use the products.

During this process I just created about 30 categories for which I will now need to go and develop studies with supporting Bible references and commentary for each category. Patty was very helpful when I ran into difficulty. It seems like other power users may wish to, or may be doing the same thing, and I wonder how we can work together to make more available to the users. I will be happy to share what I put together and I am sure that others will be also. It may just need a little promo from you guys.
Blessings,
Pastor Larry

We haven’t had many inquiries like yours. I don’t think there’s as much interest in a community built around PocketBible as you might think. But I have some suggestions…

You should get BookBuilder and create PocketBible versions of your Bible studies. This will make them easier to share. If you’re going to be distributing them you should get the Professional version so that we can assign unique ID’s to your books to keep them from messing up anyone’s library.

You might look for some existing Bible software forums and see if you can scare up any interest. There’s a group called biblesoftware on Yahoo Groups. There’s another called believerpug for Palm/PDA users. Neither is very active.

We’d be happy to support any kind of group that might be put together, but my experience has been that there’s not as much interest in this as one might think. I don’t know why that is; I’ve never bothered to investigate. I think people have their own way of looking at the Bible and figure it’s unlikely that anyone else would have anything to offer that they could trust.

I can’t say enough about the way you’ve written PB for Win without using the registry. Keeping all configs, settings, etc. saved in a directory location rather than in the registry is so much better for any product which is not centrally managed in an enterprise environment. Some of us still remember ini files. Of course they’re xml now. Some would consider this a step back to ancient times, the dark ages of the PC. You obviously remember DOS the way I do simple and portable. Rather than ancient times, I consider this going back to the basics of the good old days when system management and portability was so much simpler. In today’s world if a Windows box crashes you better have a good backup (including the registry) or you’ll spend hours reinstalling because all of the apps store their uniqueness in the registry. With PB for Win the USB key is really a backup also. Building PB for Win the “old” way, I just have to find another box with USB support plug in and I’m back in business, or as soon as I get the hard drive repaired and Windows reinstalled, I simply plug in the USB key and again back in business immediately. Much less time if it’s Friday or Saturday night and you’re polishing off a lesson for Sunday. Thanks again for remembering the KISS principle. It’s very refreshing to see something like this in today’s world of bloated code and total Windows integration.

Thanks for gettin’ it. We’ve never liked the registry nor having to run a program to remove an application. You should be able to delete a folder and have it gone. There’s no excuse for the way things have gone.

I got an email from a customer today who had one Windows XP machine at home with multiple users and he has the users locked out of Program Files so they can’t install anything and needed help getting the program to work. It wasn’t a problem but it makes it easy to guess what he does for a living. I’ve never understood the need to lock these machines down so tight, especially one at home. We make things more complicated than they need to be.

PocketBible for Windows is great!!! I use it multiple times a day. Are there any plans to include Memorize on this platform? It would be great to have it as a window with the rest of PocketBible for Windows. Thanks again for all your great products.